Refusing to Passively Endure Injustice
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Herb Montgomery, September 13, 2024
If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:27-38)
I love it when the gospel lectionary readings are from one of the synoptic gospels. This passage in Mark gives us a lot to consider because this passage has been used for harm. As Jesus followers today, we can choose to let go of harmful interpretations to make room for more life-giving ones.
First, the claim that Jesus was the Messiah has long been used to harm our Jewish friends, family and neighbors. Before Christians used the title of Messiah against the Jewish community, who the Messiah was was an intra-tradition argument. What I mean is that Jewish voices within the Jewish community initially made the claim of Messiahship was in dialogue and sometimes debate with other Jewish voices. The earliest Jewish Jesus followers, even before the narrative events of his death and resurrection, had recognized something in Jesus’ teachings that gave them hope in Jewish renewal and restoration. That hope was originally a liberation hope within a larger oppressed community that was anything but monolithic. For them, Jesus’ teachings pointed to the same liberation they hoped for.
The community for whom the gospel of Mark was written recognized Jesus as Messiah and our reading this week was intended to affirm this recognition. There is something political for the early church deeper in this reading too. Naming Peter as the one who declares Jesus’ messiahship in this gospel narrative also affirms the community’s recognition of Peter’s authority among the other apostles in the early Jesus movement. Jesus as Messiah was not just an question for the Markan community. All of the communities after Jesus hotly debated which voices were to be recognized as authoritative. So this week’s passage is actually much more about Peter than it is about Jesus: it is only secondarily about Jesus’ messiahship, a tenet that this community already accepted. We should read this passage primarily as establishing Peter’s authority as one who recognized and affirmed the community’s belief in Jesus’ messiahship.
Whatever we make of the claim of Jesus’ messiahship today, we must be intentional about holding our interpretation in a life-giving way for all. Messiahship originally meant liberation and restoration. Today we must similarly hold our interpretation in a way that does no harm. Within Christianity today, we must be especially careful in regard to the history of harm we are responsible for by the careless ways we have used the term “Messiah” when we speak of Jesus.
Let’s now talk about Jesus’ call to take up the cross. Many Christians have held the cross in a way that promotes the myth of redemptive suffering. Too often, bearing one’s cross refers to the kind of suffering that every person suffers whether they are standing up for justice or not. Let’s be honest: life includes a lot of suffering. It’s how we interpret and respond to that suffering that matters. But the cross was only about a specific kind of suffering, not all suffering in general. The cross was a political consequence and had a political context. The cross was suffering perpetrated by those in positions of power and privilege on people who were calling for change within an unjust system. Latin American liberation theologian Jon Sobrino warns us of romanticizing the cross and removing it from its original political context, and thus romanticizing suffering that has nothing to do with working for justice.
“There has been. a tendency to isolate the cross from the historical course that led Jesus to it by virtue of his conflicts with those who held political religious power. In this way the cross has been turned into nothing more than a paradigm of the suffering to which all human beings are subject insofar as they are limited beings. This has given rise to a mystique of suffering rather than to a mystique of following Jesus, whose historical career led to the historical cross.” (Jon Sobrino, quoted in Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker’s For God So Loved the World?, p. 16)
Suffering doesn’t give life. Mujerista theologians (Hispanic woman’s liberation theologians) remind us that life is found in our struggle against suffering (see Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria. Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century, p. 21).
Jesus didn’t choose to suffer. He chose to live a life in opposition to injustice and oppression. Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose to refuse to let go of his hold on the fight for justice when threatened with a Roman cross if he continued. For Jesus, the cross was a Roman-imposed response to Jesus’ refusal to change his course. The cross today is not suffering in general but the threat by those who benefit from an unjust status quo that we will suffer if we speak out. I don’t interpret Jesus in this week’s reading as promoting suffering. Rather he is calling for those being threatened for speaking out against injustice to keep speaking out, to not be silent, to keep up the fight and join him in the fight even in the face of real threats.
Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, feminist theologians, rightly interpret the cross when they write:
“To be a Christian means keeping faith with those who have heard and lived God’s call for justice, radical love, and liberation; who have challenged unjust systems both political and ecclesiastical; and who in that struggle have refused to be victims and have refused to cower under the threat of violence, suffering, and death. Fullness of life is attained in moments of decision for such faithfulness and integrity. When the threat of death is refused and the choice is made for justice, radical love, and liberation, the power of death is overthrown. Resurrection is radical courage. Resurrection means that death is overcome in those precise instances when human beings choose life, refusing the threat of death. Jesus climbed out of the grave in the Garden of Gethsemane when he refused to abandon his commitment to the truth even though his enemies threatened him with death. On Good Friday, the Resurrected One was Crucified.” (God So Loved the World?, Brown and Parker, p. 22)
Too often Christians in power have used “bearing one’s cross” to teach that to follow Jesus means to passively and patiently endure whatever abuse, injustice, or oppression one is experiencing with the hope that in the afterlife your suffering will be rewarded. Nothing could be further from the way Jesus describes taking up one’s cross in our reading this week. The cross is not passively enduring injustice. The cross is the threat abusers and oppressors make against us for our refusal to passively endure injustice. The cross is the threat intended to make us passive.
When Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross, he’s telling them to keep refusing to be passive, even if you’re threatened with a cross for doing so. And even in doing so, we must remember that the cross is not intrinsic to standing up for what is right. A cross only enters our story if our abuser or oppressor chooses to respond to our calls for change with threats rather than change. Jesus’ call is a call to courageously refuse to let go of your hope for justice, for change, for liberation, and freedom to thrive. Don’t passively endure suffering. Don’t give in when those who have privileges to lose seek to persuade us to patiently “endure pain, humiliation, and violation of our sacred rights to self-determination, wholeness, and freedom” rather than speaking out (God So Loved the World?, Brown and Parker, p. 2)
How are you speaking out for change right now? How are you working for a brighter today and tomorrow? In whatever ways we are working for justice, even if those benefitting from injustice threaten us, the Jesus of our passage this week calls us to keep at it.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. Share an experience of where you refused to be silent about injustice? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts.
Thank you for listening to The Social Jesus Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if the podcast platform you’re using offers this option, please leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!
Season 2, Episode 19: Mark 8.27-38. Lectionary B, Proper 19
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week we’ll be inspired to do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out at:
New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 1 Episode 22: Refusing to Passively Endure Injustice
Mark 8:27-38
“Too often Christians in power have used “bearing one’s cross” to teach that to follow Jesus means to passively and patiently endure whatever abuse, injustice, or oppression one is experiencing with the hope that in the afterlife your suffering will be rewarded. Nothing could be further from the way Jesus describes taking up one’s cross in our reading this week. The cross is not passively enduring injustice. The cross is the threat abusers and oppressors make against us for our refusal to passively endure injustice. The cross is the threat intended to make us passive. When Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross, he’s telling them to keep refusing to be passive, even if you’re threatened with a cross for doing so. Jesus’ call is a call to courageously refuse to let go of your hope for justice, for change, for liberation, and freedom to thrive. Don’t passively endure suffering. Don’t give in when those who have privileges to lose seek to persuade us to patiently ‘endure pain, humiliation, and violation of our sacred rights to self-determination, wholeness, and freedom’ rather than speaking out”
Available on all major podcast carriers and at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/refusing-to-passively-endure-injustice
Now Available on Audible!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery, Narrated by Jeff Moon
Available now on Audible!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
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Resurrection as Injustice Undone
Now Available on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 7: Luke 24.36b-48. Lectionary B, Easter 3
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 2, Episode 7: Luke 24.36b-48. Lectionary B, Easter 3
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Announcing a New Podcast from RHM!
The Social Jesus Podcast
A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.
This week:
Season 1 Episode 1: Resurrection as Injustice Undone
Luke 24:36-48
“Whatever we make of the resurrection stories today, we cannot ignore the fact that nowhere in these passages is death lifted up. The good news is that injustice had been undone! Oppression and power don’t have to have the last words in our stories. The opposition doesn’t have to have the last word. Love can conquer injustice. Our stories aren’t over yet.”
Listen at:
https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/resurrection-as-injustice-undone
Resurrection as Injustice Undone
Herb Montgomery; April 12, 2024
Our gospel reading from the lectionary this third weekend of Easter is from the gospel of Luke:
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
They were startled
and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
1` said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. (Luke 24:36-48)
Let’s get the context of this reading. It all begins back in the first verse of chapter 24.
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here; he has risen!
Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:
‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”’ Then they remembered his words. (Luke 24:1-8)
Luke’s version of the resurrection story is probably my favorite of the four versions in our sacred canon. Unlike Mark and Matthew, which set up the early Jesus movement to grow out of a Galilean center, Luke sets the movement in a Judean center that begins in Jerusalem, not Galilee, and lays the foundation for the events we will read about in the book of Acts. What makes Luke my favorite, though, is that it captures best what the good news was for the early Lukan community: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!”
The good news for the early Jesus movement was not that Jesus had died. How could it have been? In the beginning, and for most of the early Jewish Jesus followers, the fact that Rome had again suppressed a Jewish movement for justice and change was not good news. The good news is that this Jesus, who stood with the marginalized and oppressed—this Jesus their God had brought back to life! The execution of Jesus had been reversed, undone, and defeated. Everything accomplished through the death of Jesus had been undone! Jesus salvific work had been interrupted but not stopped.
Now his life giving work would live on in the lives of his followers. They did not see their salvation as accomplished through the cross. They saw the cross as the status quo’s attempt to stop Jesus’ saving, life-giving work. And the resurrection was the sign that the cross had been reversed. Rome didn’t have the last word; justice, love, compassion had the last word. Now the saving work of Jesus would live on and grow.
Consider the emphasis in our reading: “The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” The point is not that Jesus would suffer and accomplish something through that suffering. No, it’s that though he would suffer, God would triumph over that suffering and bring him back to life. This is Easter’s good news. Hate, injustice, bigotry, power and privilege don’t have to have the last word in our stories. Justice and love can!
The book of Acts, which continues Luke, always defines Jesus’ resurrection as the good news, not his dying:
“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all.” (Acts 4:33, emphasis added)
The message was not one of death and dying, but of life and resurrection:
Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. (Acts 2:22-24)
Their God had reversed Jesus’ death!
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. (Acts 2:32-33)
When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see. (Acts 3:12-16)
Historically, Christians have used these passages in antisemitic ways to harm our Jewish friends and neighbors. But Peter, who is speaking in Acts 2 and 3, is also a Jew, and the Jewish people did not crucify Jesus. In Luke’s gospel, the Jewish people loved Jesus. It was the elites who had everything to lose if their society took on the shape described in Jesus’ sermon on the mount or Luke’s sermon on the plain, and it was the elites who sought to use Rome’s strong arm to silence Jesus. This was not a religious conflict but a political one. It was not a matter of Christians versus Jews as antisemitic Christians have made it out to be. It was a conflict where the rich and powerful tried to stop Jesus (Luke 6:24) and God stepped in and undid their attempt.
Then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ (Acts 4:10-11)
The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him from a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:30-32)
You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.) We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. (Acts 10:36-43)
So it is also stated elsewhere: ‘You will not let your holy one see decay.’ Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay. Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. (Acts 13:35-38)
And lastly,
“We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. (Acts 13:32-33)
Whatever we make of the resurrection stories today, reading them through much more scientific lenses, we cannot ignore the fact that nowhere in the book of Acts is Jesus’ death lifted up. Nowhere does it suggest that or how Jesus’ death saves us. This is the canonical record of the gospel going forth to the world and nowhere is that gospel centered in Jesus dying. The gospel, without exception, is over and over again centered in how Jesus’ death had been reversed and overturned through him being brought back to life and what THAT now means to those who will follow Jesus’ teachings.
Now let’s get back to our reading for this week.
In Luke 24:9-13, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others tell the apostles what they’ve seen. The apostles don’t initially believe the women “because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” Then Peter gets up and runs to the tomb. (John’s gospel adds John to this part of the story, but in Luke’s version, John is not present.)
Then we come to the setup for our passage this week, the story of two followers of Jesus who were on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32).
These two unknowingly run into Jesus as they travel, and through a series of interchanges share with him what’s been happening in Jerusalem and what the women have reported, which has left them scratching their heads. Jesus responds, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
These disciples still don’t recognize Jesus but implore Jesus to stay with them for the night.
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”
Verses 33-35 then read:
“They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, ‘It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.’ Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.”
The good news is that Jesus’ death had been undone!
Whatever else we make of these stories today, their truth is that oppression and power don’t have to have the last words in our story. A world shaped by compassion, love and justice may meet opposition. Our efforts may even be stopped. But we can choose to keep going.
The opposition doesn’t have to have the last word. Love can conquer injustice. To borrow imagery used by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we can choose to bend the moral arc of our universe toward justice even when it seems that those in power are choosing to bend it otherwise. Our stories aren’t over yet.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How does defining the crucifixion as the attempted interruption of Jesus’ saving work and the resurrection as injustice undone inform your own justice work today? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to The Social Jesus podcast, please like and subscribe to the SJ podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
Are you getting all of RHM’s Free Resources?
Free Sign Up Here
The Harmful Myth of Redemptive Death
Now Available on Amazon!
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon!
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 4: John 12.20-33. Lectionary B, Lent 5
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 2, Episode 4: John 12.20-33. Lectionary B, Lent 5
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
The Harmful Myth of Redemptive Death
Herb Montgomery, March 15, 2024
“Truth can overcome falsehood, life can triumph over the death-dealing agents of our world, love can conquer hate, and, in the end, it may look differently than we expected, yet we can choose for justice, love and life to have the last word. No matter how hopeless the present moment, our story isn’t over yet.”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. (John 12:20-33)
We continue in the gospel of John this week. Our passage, once again, has a problematic history of justifying death or abuse for those in disadvantaged or marginalized social locations or in predatory personal relationships. We must be careful and intentional not to perpetuate that harm (see God So Loved the World?). We’ll consider this further in a moment.
First, remember this is the last gospel to be written among those in our sacred canon. And it was written very late, almost a century removed from the events it writes about. This version of the Jesus story that was written by the Johannine community is radically different from the others as well. The few stories that it has in common with Mark, Matthew and Luke have different spins, different emphases, and different interpreted lessons (see Differences in John and Why They Matter).
In the other gospels, Jesus is executed by the state for speaking truth to power about the harm being done to the marginalized in his society. His protest culminates in his flipping the tables in the temple courtyard. In John’s gospel, this event has nothing to do with Jesus’ execution. Even the emphasis subtly changes. It’s no longer referred to with the overtones of a imperial execution for politically threatening the Pax Romana. Now its simply a “death” or “dying.” It’s referred to not as being crucified on a Roman cross, but, more opaquely, as being “lifted up.” The emphasis, unlike the synoptics, is not so much on the redemptive resurrection of Jesus as it is undoing, overturning, and reversing everything accomplished through Jesus’ crucifixion. The emphasis is on Jesus’ dying itself, and that death becomes redemptive.
In Mark, the Markan community was trying to make sense out of Jesus’ execution. In their telling, Jesus must be crucified and resurrected. In fact, the only reason Jesus is allowed to be crucified is so that he can be resurrected. By the time we get to John’s telling, though, Jesus must simply die. Everything is accomplished through the dying. The resurrection is simply a mysterious afterward but all redemptive accomplishment is done through his dying.
These are not insignificant theological difference between the gospels. These theologies have produced very different results in the lives of Jesus communities that emphasize one or the other.
I want to say one brief word about this shift in John. Even when Jesus’ death becomes redemptive in the Johaninne Jesus community, this death is never punitive or at the hands of God. Jesus doesn’t die as our substitute in John. Even though Jesus’ death is redemptive in that gospel, it doesn’t fit very easily within Western Christian penal substitutionary theology. It fits more easily in other atonement theories that have been held by Christians throughout history, especially the Christus Victor paradigm (“now the prince of this world will be driven out.”) and the Moral Influence paradigm (when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself). But John’s gospel never says that Jesus’ death is to satisfy justice or a God that needs someone to stand in the gap and be punished for everyone else. That explanation doesn’t show up at all as an explanation to why Jesus (the seed in our reading) must die.
But this doesn’t completely solve the problems. Even if we embrace a different explanation of why Jesus died than penal substitutionary atonement, those other explanations have still produced harmful fruit for people who have subscribed to them.
Let’s talk about the fruit produced by the Christus Victor explanation first. Those who believe Jesus’ death was redemptive too often also interpret their own suffering with similar implications. To explain their own suffering they respond by simply and sometimes lethally being patient in the face of harm. They think something good will come of this rather than see it as an evil that must be stood up to. They then are persuaded to passively endure their suffering and come to believe that God is working through their suffering. Some go so far as to believe that even if they die as a result they are fulfilling some higher divine purpose.
Joanne Brown and Rebecca Parker correctly critique this model:
“Such a theology has devastating effects on human life. The reality is that victimization never leads to triumph. It can lead to extended pain if it is not refused or fought. It can lead to destruction of the human spirit through the death of a person’s sense of power, worth, dignity. or creativity. It can lead to actual death. By denying the reality of suffering and death, the Christus Victor theory of the atonement defames all those who suffer and trivializes tragedy.” (God So Loved the World? p. 5)
The moral influence explanation doesn’t fare much better; it’s just as harmful. Again, from the deep and insightful work of Brown and Parker:
“The moral influence theory is founded on the belief that an innocent, suffering victim and only an innocent, suffering victim for whose suffering we are in some way responsible has the power to confront us with our guilt and move us to a new decision. This belief has subtle and terrifying connections as to how victims of violence can be viewed.” (God So Loved the World? p. 9)
In our work of trying to effect social change in response to social racism, classism, sexism, cis-heterosexism, or other systems, the moral influence theory has too often been peddled as a method: we suffer for the purpose of changing the hearts and minds of our oppressors or abusers. In this paradigm, victimization is “lifted up” as an agent that, if patiently endured, will persuade those responsible for our harm to embrace justice instead. Our suffering, if patiently endured, can change them. This is very destructive. It prioritizes the oppressor’s or abuser’s need for redemption over and above the rights of those who are genuinely, concretely, being harmed, included in losing their most basic right: to simply exist and live.
Viewing Jesus’ death as redemptive, no matter how you explain that redemption, has historically proven harmful for those who apply that theology to their own suffering, abuse, and injustice.
This is my most serious concern with the gospel of John. It is very different from the other gospels, and these differences are not always benign. The shift away from a redemptive resurrection to the salvific agent being Jesus’ cross alone may sound good at an emotionally tugging altar call. But when we try to live this theology, we need something better.
This is why I favor Mark, Matthew’s and Luke’s attempts to explain Jesus’ execution over the Johannine community’s explanation. The goal in John’s gospel is always Jesus getting to the cross. But in the synoptics, the goal of Jesus’ death is getting past the cross to the resurrection. This difference matters to me. For me, it has serious life or death implications for those who are choosing how to relate to their own suffering or how to navigate the injustices they face.
I’ll close this week with words I shared a couple weeks ago, of Dr. Katie Cannon in the foreword of the 20th anniversary edition of Dr. Delores Williams classic Sisters in the Wilderness:
“Theologians need to think seriously about the real-life consequences of redemptive suffering, God-talk that equates the acceptance of pain, misery, and abuse as the way for true believers to live as authentic Christian disciples. Those who spew such false teaching and warped preaching must cease and desist.”
For me, the Jesus story is not a story that glorifies death and suffering. It’s not about the cross. It’s a story that communicates how truth can overcome falsehood, life can triumph over the death-dealing agents of our world, love can conquer hate, and, in the end, justice, love and life will have the last word. No matter how hopeless the present moment, our story isn’t over yet.
Discussion Group Questions
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your discussion group.
2. How do the gospel stories call you resist suffering and injustice? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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Bearing A Cross and the Myth of Redemptive Suffering
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Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.
by Herb Montgomery
Available now on Amazon.
After two successful decades of preaching a gospel of love within the Christian faith tradition Herb felt like something was missing. He went back to the gospels and began reading them through the interpretive lenses of various marginalized communities and what he found radically changed his life forever. The teachings of the Jesus in the gospel stories express a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of those in marginalized communities. This book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, and presents a compelling argument for a more socially compassionate and just expression of Christianity. Herb’s findings in his latest book are shared in the hopes that it will dramatically impact how you practice your Christianity, too.
Finding Jesus by Herb Montgomery is the #1 New Release in its category.
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New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 2, Episode 1: Mark 8.31-38. Lectionary B, Lent 2
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 2, Episode 1: Mark 8.31-38. Lectionary B, Lent 2
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Thanks in advance for watching!
Bearing A Cross and the Myth of Redemptive Suffering
Herb Montgomery | February 24, 2024
“It may seem to be a subtle interpretive difference, but it makes all the difference in the world in how we respond to abuse, injustice and suffering.”
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
Our reading this second week of Lent is from the gospel of Mark:
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:31-38)
Every year when this passage rolls around in the calendar of the lectionary, I’m reminded of how much care and intentionality must be exercised with passages like it. This passage is especially vulnerable to being interpreted in death-dealing ways rather than life-giving ones. It’s one of the central passages that has been used throughout Christian history to teach the harmful myth of redemptive suffering. Let me share a little bit of personal background.
I grew up as an only child with a single mom. At times, my mom would find herself in abusive relationships with men. Only once did I ever see my mom try to stay and make it work, and that only resulted in harm for both her and me. After that experience, she never hesitated to leave again. I’m proud of my mom for learning how to establish healthy boundaries in her life. While she was alive, through her difficult life experiences, she developed a keen ability to defend and hold onto the value of her humanity and mine. I was her only son. And she would not allow men who even began to reveal red flags that were potentially abusive to take up space in her life.
My mother was a Christian, and I also witnessed many pastors at various times use this week’s passage to encourage her to stay, stick it out, and “turn the other cheek,” to “be like Jesus” and be willing to “take up her cross.” At times, they encouraged this approach with the idea that somehow my mom’s suffering might change, save, or redeem her husband. This is the myth of redemptive suffering: that our suffering can redeem our abusers and oppressors. It’s not only bad advice based on harmful interpretations of what bearing a cross or being like Jesus actually means, but it has literally been lethal to so many women. Women have lost their lives staying with abusive men. (I realize that women are not the only ones who suffer at the hands of abusive partners, and I’m using my own experiences with my mother and her life as my primary reference point.)
As we consider our passage this week, I want to highly recommend the now-classic essay by Brown and Parker, “For God So Loved the World?” You can find a readable PDF of this essay at http://healingreligion.com/2490/pdf/forgodso.pdf. I’m grateful to healingreligion.com for providing this resource freely.
The very first paragraph of Brown’s and Parker’s essay states:
“Women are acculturated to accept abuse. We come to believe that it is our place to suffer. Breaking silence about the victimization of women and the ways in which we have become anesthetized to our violation is a central theme in women’s literature, theology, art, social action, and politics. With every new revelation we confront again the deep and painful secret that sustains us in oppression: We have been convinced that our suffering is justified.”
For Christian women, the Christian traditional interpretation of the death of Jesus as redemptive serves to promote the harmful and death-dealing teaching that suffering is or can be redemptive. I’m reminded of the words of Katie G. Cannon in the foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of Delores S. Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk:
“[Williams] contends that theologians need to think seriously about the real-life consequences of redemptive suffering, God-talk that equates the acceptance of pain, misery, and abuse as the way for true believers to live as authentic Christian disciples. Those who spew such false teaching and warped preaching must cease and desist.”
Space here does not permit me here this week to critique various atonement theories and present alternatives (I have done this elsewhere). I do want to offer some guidance this week with the specific passage we are considering.
Too often, the cross we are to counseled to “bear” is defined as an injustice itself. When we define the injustice or abuse we are suffering as our cross to bear, then being Christlike leads to being passive and patiently enduring whatever injustice or abuse we are suffering.
But this is not what the cross stood for in the Jesus story of the synoptic gospels. In that story, Jesus begins the week with a protest where he flips the tables of the money changers in the temple courtyard. We have to understand the context to see why.
In the time of Jesus, the poor and marginalized were being crushed under the Temple State’s complicity with the Roman Empire’s extractive economy. The poor were getting poorer and farmers were losing their land through growing indebtedness to the rich and wealthy class. Even in our reading this week, Jesus sets his sights on the heart of the Temple State in Jerusalem, the temple, and determines he must demonstrate there against the abuses that were going on. The rest of that week in these gospels, we witness the system pushing back. That doesn’t result in Jesus’ redemptive death, but in his unjust state execution for speaking out. In the story, the Divine overturns the injustice three days later. Everything accomplished through the death of Jesus was reversed, undone, and overcome through Jesus being brought back to life.
In the story, Jesus:
- Stands up to the injustice he sees happening around him
- The system threatens him with a cross if he doesn’t shut up
- Jesus refuses to be passive. Refuses to be silent. Refuses to shut up. He keeps pushing.
- The response of state is to put him on a cross.
The third step in this chronology is what it means to embrace the way of the cross. A cross is not intrinsic to following Jesus. A cross only comes into our Jesus-following if our oppressors or abusers choose to threaten us with one. If our standing up to injustice threatens them enough for them to use force to sit us back down and get us to be silent and passive. It is at this point that Jesus’ words begin to take on life-giving rather than death-dealing meaning. I offer my comments in brackets:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross [be willing to not be silent] and follow me [in speaking out].
For whoever wants to save their life [through remaining silent] will lose it. [We lose a part of ourselves every time we are silent in the face of injustice.]
but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel [being willing to speak out in face of rejection and pushback] will save it [hold onto and even reclaim our humanity that the system wants to exploit while denying].
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, [through going along with the system]
yet forfeit their soul [silence your own conscience in what you know to be right]?
Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? [Whatever the cost of speaking out, it’s worth it. Whatever the reward being offered for being silent, it’s not worth it.]”
The cross is not the injustice or abuse we are to bear. The cross is what our oppressors or abusers threaten us with if we don’t cease and desist speaking out. To be willing to bear a cross means instead to keep speaking out, don’t be silent, keep calling for justice, keep holding abusers and oppressors accountable. This is the only way we and they will ever experience change.
How we define bearing a cross—whether passively bearing injustice, or refusing to be silent in the face of injustice—may seem to be a subtle interpretive difference. But for a Jesus follower it makes all the difference in the world in how we respond to abuse and suffering.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does connecting a cross to the refusal to be silent impact how you respond to injustice? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I want to also say a special thank you this week to Quoir Publishing, Keith Giles who wrote the foreword to my latest book, all the special people on our launch team, and all of you who made this release a success.
Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and soon also on Audible in audio book format.
As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on X (or Twitter), Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s new Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. Also, if you enjoy listening to the Jesus for Everyone podcast, please like and subscribe to the JFE podcast through the podcast platform you use and consider taking some time to give us a review. This helps others find our podcast as well.
You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
Thank you to all of our supporters.
If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by clicking “donate” above.
New Episode of JustTalking!d
Season 1, Episode 28: Matthew 16.21-28. Lectionary A, Proper 17
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at https://youtu.be/IWvmLXmKTss?si=8h2rhEwJMyGUpIFB
Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment
Thanks in advance for watching!
What Taking Up a Cross Doesn’t Mean
Herb Montgomery | September 1, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:21-28)
Seeing Jesus’ death as his destiny to suffer was only one way early Christians sought to make sense of his state execution.
As we consider this week’s reading, let’s consider that during this time, Jesus’ followers were facing persecution and martyrdom for pushing for a world that was safer, more compassionate, more egalitarian, and more inclusive: changes that would cost the privileged, propertied, and powerful who were profiting from their society’s injustices and unequal structure.
What I find most fascinating about this week’s reading is that multiple segments of early Christians equated the cross with an unjust backlash from those in power for promoting a more just world (as Jesus did when he flipped the money changers’ tables in the Temple). That world was something followers of Jesus were to embrace as part of what it meant to follow Jesus in their social context. Jesus’ state execution was not seen as something he suffered substitutionally, instead of them. Instead, the cross was Rome’s tool to silence protest and insurrection in relation to the Pax Romana. Christians interpreted the cross as something to participate in rather than as something Jesus suffered in their place:
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:38)
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)
And also in the non-canonical gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “Whoever doesn’t . . . take up their cross like I do isn’t worthy of me.” (Gospel of Thomas 55)
Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan point out how prevalent in the gospels this point of view is when they write:
“For [the gospel of] Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time.” (The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Kindle Locations 1591-1593)
A word of caution, though: As much as participation remedies harmful substitutionary interpretations of Jesus’ death, the mantra of “taking up one’s cross” has also been used to harm marginalized and disenfranchised communities and people trying to survive abuse.
Taking up or bearing one’s cross has often been used as a metaphor for being passive in enduring the abuse and/or injustice someone may be facing. Pastors used this rhetoric to counsel my own mother to stay in abusive marriages. It’s counsel that has often proven lethal, both for men and women.
Taking up a cross and following Jesus doesn’t mean putting up with abuse or injustice. The cross was the tool of the state used against those who were resisting abuse and injustice, not being passively silent. Rome used the threat of the cross to quell uprisings and revolts.
In other words, the cross is not an injustice that someone should simply bear with their hopes and sights set on heaven. The cross was what someone suffered at the hands of the powerful and elite when that person or others did not simply bear the injustice and harms of their oppression and marginalization.
If you don’t speak up, if you remain passive in the face of injustice, there is no cross to bear. A cross only enters the picture when we speak up and speak out, and those in power are threatened enough to threaten us with a cross if we don’t shut up.
In those moments, Jesus encourages his followers to keep speaking up, keep speaking out, keep pushing for change. This is a far cry from Jesus counseling his followers to simply bear injustice. Jesus encourages his followers: when they are afraid, when they experiencing pushback in response to their calls and demonstrations for change, keep at it even if they threaten you with a cross.
These are the moments when we are not self-sacrificing. We aren’t choosing to die; we are choosing not to let go of that which is life-giving, just, right, and good. Jesus didn’t choose to die. He chose not to let go of life when threatened with death for doing so. There is an important difference. If we define the cross as passivity that we should imitate, how we respond to injustice and wrongs in our world will also be passive. We’ll set our sights on a future heaven, leaving our present world untouched, unchallenged, and unchanged.
But if we define the cross as punishment for speaking up and working for a safer, more compassionate, just world here, now, we will see it as punishment that we are not to allow to silence us. We will bear it as we keep working to make the world a better place, and that will change our response to injustice and abuse in our daily lives.
Choosing death doesn’t bring life. Choosing life brings life. In the very next statement of our passage, Jesus says:
“For whoever wants to save their life [by choosing to be silent] will lose it [abuse and injustice will continue], but whoever loses their life for me [speaking out about harms being committed] will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world [by being silently complicit in injustice], yet forfeit their soul [their being, who they are]? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
Again, this was written at a time in Galilee when the Jesus-following community was experiencing persecution for their vision of a society where everyone was taken care of. That vision, inspired by Jesus, was a threat to those profiting from inequity.
What does this mean for us today?
Think back to a time when you experienced pushback for speaking out against injustice. Were you encouraged not to rock the boat or to just remain silent? Were you misguidedly told to simply “bear your cross?”
That situation was not your cross to bear. It was injustice. The Jesus of our story this week encourages you to keep speaking out even if those who are disturbed threaten you with a cross.
I want to be clear here. The cross is not an intrinsic part of following Jesus because following Jesus is not a death cult. It is a life path. The cross only becomes a part of following Jesus when those threatened by a more just world choose to use a cross to threaten you.
We are witnessing this in the U.S. daily. From courtroom judges receiving death threats for doing what is right and privileged people being threatened by a multiracial, diverse democracy, to men responding in fragility to a doll movie or cisgender people feeling attacked when trans people experience equality and justice, there are so many, many stories. Crosses have not disappeared, they’ve simply changed form.
When a more compassionate, just, and safe world for everyone is perceived as a threat to privileged people, when those people lash out and seek to silence you, using rhetoric like “being woke” as a slur, the Jesus of this week’s reading is telling us, keep going. It’s working.
Even in the face of threats, keep speaking out and working alongside those our present system deems “the least of these.”
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What does taking up a cross mean to you? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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Taking Up Our Crosses, Injustice, and Abuse
Herb Montgomery | September 10, 2021
[To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast click Episode 388:Taking Up Our Crosses, Injustice, and Abuse]
“Oppressors throughout history have used the concept of ‘taking up one’s cross’ to prioritize themselves over survivors and to encourage oppressed people to passively and patiently endure violence rather than resist . . . This story is, on the other hand, encouraging Jesus’ followers to resist as he did flipping tables in the temple courtyard, even though it resulted in the state violence of a cross.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:27-38)
In this week’s reading, we encounter Jesus’ admonition to his followers that they also “take up their cross.” This saying has a long history of religious abuse, so I want to give a word of caution about it.
Years ago now, I was invited to a conference on nonviolence and the atonement. I chose to speak on the violence of interpreting the cross event itself as salvific—how atonement theories that treat the violent death of Jesus as salvific have borne death dealing fruit to oppressed communities and/or those who belong to marginalized communities. I explained how the atonement theory of penal substitution has historically produced various forms of social abuse, and how abuse has also been the fruit of alternative atonement theories such as moral influence theory and Christus Victor.
Oppressors throughout history have used the concept of “taking up one’s cross” to prioritize themselves over survivors and to encourage oppressed people to passively and patiently endure violence rather than resist. This interpretation has proven very convenient for oppressors and those who don’t want to disrupt the power imbalance of the status quo. It also impacts intimate relationships as well. When one spouse suffers physical or emotional abuse at the hands of another, for example, how many times have Christian pastors counseled the abused spouse to “bear their cross,” be “like Jesus,” and simply “turn the other cheek”? I have written at length on other ways to interpret Jesus’ turning of the other cheek as a call to creative, nonviolent forms of disruption, protest, and resistance (see A Primer on Self-Affirming Nonviolence Parts 1-10). I interpret the turn-the-other-cheek passages as did the late Walter Wink, who understood them to give those pushed to the undersides and edges of Jesus’ society a way to reclaim and affirm themselves despite being dehumanized.
This week, alongside the feminist and womanist scholars who have deeply influenced my thinking, I want to suggest that “taking up one’s cross” is not a call to patiently, passively endure the violence of systemic or relational oppression and abuse, but rather is a call to take hold of life and stand up against injustice even if there is a threat for doing so. This saying is not a call to passively suffer, but to protest even if the status quo threatens suffering if you speak out.
The implications are huge. What we are discussing this week is called the myth of redemptive suffering. I have often repeated Joanne Carlson Brown’s and Rebecca Parker’s statement in their essay God So Loved The World?:
“It is not acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not, Am I willing to suffer? but Do I desire fully to live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering. If you believe that acceptance of suffering gives life, then your resources for confronting perpetrators of violence and abuse will be numbed.” (also in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, p. 18)
So what did Jesus mean, then, when he said “take up your own cross?”
First, Borg and Crossan correctly remind us that Jesus’ cross in the gospels was about participation, not substitution:
“For Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time. (Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem; Kindle Locations 1589-1593)
While I agree with Borg and Crossan about the theme of participation rather than substitution, I disagree with their interpretation that suffering on a cross was intrinsic to following Jesus, and I don’t subscribe to the idea that suffering is an intrinsic precursor to triumph or success. Suffering only enters the story of following Jesus if those benefitting from the status quo feel threatened by changes that Jesus’ new social vision would make, and threaten his followers with a cross. Being willing to take up one’s cross is not a call to be passive in the face of suffering, but a call to protest and resist even in the face of being threatened with a cross.
“Taking up one’s cross” in this context means being willing to endure the results of disrupting, confronting, resisting, and protesting injustice. The cross in the Jesus story is a symbol of the state violence that those in power threaten protestors with to scare them into remaining passive. Remember, as Carlson Brown and Parker wrote, the question is not how much am I willing to suffer, but how badly do I want to live!
If those in power threaten you with a cross, then and only then it becomes necessary for you to “take up a cross” and stand up against injustice. Protesting, for instance, does not always involve being arrested, but if it does, protest anyway!
The goal in scenarios like these is not to suffer, but to refuse to let go of life.
How one interprets taking up one’s cross has deep implications for survivors of relational violence, and for all who are engaging any form of social justice work. When those who feel threatened try to intimidate and silence your voice through fear of an imposed “cross,” this week’s reading calls us to count the cost and refuse to let go of life. Do not be silenced! Though it may sound like an oxymoron on the surface, speaking out in the face of a threat is a form of rejecting death.
Let’s take relational violence as an example. First there is the relational violence itself. Then we have a choice in our response:
Too often, Jesus’ teaching of taking up the cross is interpreted so that the abuse itself is the cross.
But the abuse is not the cross but an initial injustice, and the cross is the threats one receives for standing up to or resisting injustice.
Jesus is encouraging his followers to resist as he did flipping tables in the temple courtyard, even though it resulted in the state violence of a cross.
If a cross comes into the picture, then resist anyway. Jesus’ nonviolence was rooted in resistance, and sometimes change happens before oppressors send a cross. At other times, change happens after the cross. In both cases, suffering may come, but it is not redemptive.
Jesus emerged in his Jewish society as someone calling for the just distribution of food and land and the inclusion of those presently marginalized. His way of structuring human community threatened imperial Roman society and those who most benefited from the Roman system. And the early Jesus movement that grew out of an encounter with this Jesus resulted in a way of doing life together that was also seen as a threat to those in positions of power and privilege.
When those in power choose to threaten crosses for those standing up to systemic injustice, don’t let go. Keep holding on to the hope of change even in the face of impossible odds. Keep holding on to life! For, Jesus says, what does it profit if you gain the whole world by your silence and yet lose your humanity?
Whoever wants to save their life through remaining silent in the face of injustice will actually be letting go of life. But whoever is willing to fight for life, for equity and equality, for love and compassion, for inclusion, for a just and safe world that is home for everyone, even if you’re threatened with death and death-dealing for doing so—all who refuse to let go of life and those things that are life-giving are the ones through whom life is saved, life is found, and another world is not only seen as possible but created in those moments of refusal.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What difference does it make for you to define ‘taking up your cross’ as a possible response to your speaking out and resistance, rather than passively bearing abuse and injustice? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
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Gaining the World, Losing One’s Humanity
Herb Montgomery | February 26, 2021
In Mark’s gospel we read,
“He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:31-38)
Those controlling an unjust status quo have always used violence to force the silence of those who call for distributively just change and equitable transformation of society. In Jesus’ society, Rome maintained social “peace” by terrorizing inhabitants with the threat of a militarized, heavy handed backlash if any group disrupted the smooth functioning of the Pax Romana.
That is the political or social context in which we must understand the above passage. Jesus was facing two options: remain silent and avoid Rome’s violent response, i.e. crucifixion, or stand in the tradition of past Hebrew prophets and speak his truth to the unjust, exploitative, clients of Rome controlling the temple state. With this context, we can most safely reclaim and understand the “must” language of the passage we read today.
As Jesus saw vulnerable people in his society being harmed, he could not remain silent without losing hold, to some degree, of his own humanity. He must speak out. And speak out he did in the temple courtyard through both rhetoric and flipping the moneychangers’ tables. It is the must that must hold priority in our understanding. The reason Jesus “must suffer” the political consequences of speaking out was that he could not remain silent. I imagine he could not picture any other way. This to me speaks of his courage: he knows the cost of his upcoming temple protest, and he chooses to speak out anyway.
This gives us insight into life-giving ways to interpret the language of “taking up the cross and following” Jesus. Interpreting the cross as self-sacrifice that Jesus modeled and that we must follow too has borne destructive, harmful fruit in multiple vulnerable communities, especially women in Christian circles. In these circles, taking up one’s cross has come to mean remaining silent: Be like Jesus. Take up your cross. Just silently bear the injustice you are suffering. But this is not at all what we see Jesus doing in the story.
In the story, Jesus is refusing to be silent and bear suffering. He is speaking out, despite knowing that a cross may very well be the backlash he receives for doing so. I do not believe that Jesus would have taught the oppressed, whose lives and selves were already being sacrificed by those in power and whose humanity was already being denied, to choose self-sacrifice and denial of their humanity. Jesus instead gave them a way to affirm their humanity, worth, and value; to stand up and speak out, even in the face of the threat of death.
The other phrase in this passage that speaks to me at this moment in American society is “What does it profit a person if they gain the world but lose their self.” At the time of this writing, I was watching the second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump. Over the last four years, every time I have thought that this is the moment Republican lawmakers will wake from their spell, break from their path, and do what’s right, they have instead sunk to lower depths. But my concern is not partisan politics. My concern is humanity. One party has dug in and placed their own political, re-election aspirations over and against the common good, the good of the country, basic humanity including their own, and even against democracy itself.
Ultimately, Republican Senators voted not to convict the former president, despite how much evidence piled up over. They mis-judged that their own futures would be better if they just buried their heads in the sand . Yet what’s at stake is larger than democracy. As Jesus called his followers, we’re called to find and reclaim our humanity. To Republicans who have kept following Trump down paths that none of them should have followed, this is the moment to turn around. What does it profit a person if they gain the whole world and yet, in doing so, lose their souls?
My heart hurts as I watch the resoluteness of so many refusing to do what is right. In the spirt of our passage from Mark on doing what is right even if one is threatened with a cross, I was moved by two significant moments from the impeachment trial. The first moment was Chaplain Barry Black’s reference in his prayer at beginning of the trial to a hymn that was my favorite when I was a teenager, Once to Every Man and Nation. Second was Representative Jamie Raskin’s adaptation of Thomas Paine’s words in The Crisis at the very end of the prosecution’s case. I’ll end this article this week with both quotes:
“Once to ev’ry man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side.” —James Russell Lowell
“These are the times that try men and women’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink at this moment from the service of their cause and their country; but everyone who stands with us now, will win the love and the favor and affection of every man and every woman for all time. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; but we have this saving consolation: the more difficult the struggle, the more glorious in the end will be our victory.” —Thomas Paine
HeartGroup Application
We at RHM are continuing to ask all HeartGroups not to meet together physically at this time. Please stay virtually connected and practice physical distancing. When you do go out, please keep a six-foot distance between you and others, wear a mask, and continue to wash your hands to stop the spread of the virus.
This is also a time where we can practice the resource-sharing and mutual aid found in the gospels. Make sure the others in your group have what they need. This is a time to work together and prioritize protecting those most vulnerable among us.
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Have you ever had to make a decision between staying silent and speaking out? Share your experience and any possible lessons learned with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
Taking One’s Cross
by Herb Montgomery
“Taking up one’s cross is not a call to patiently, passively endure, but to take hold of life and stand up against injustice even if there is a cost for doing so.”
Featured Text:
The one who does not take one’s cross and follow after me cannot be my disciple. Q 14:27
Companion Texts:
Matthew 10:38: “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Luke 14:27: “And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
Gospel of Thomas 55:2: “Jesus says: ‘And whoever . . . will not take up his cross as I do, will not be worthy of me.’”
Before we begin, and given the events of this past week here in the U.S., we at Renewed Heart Ministries reaffirm our commitment to stand with our transgender and gender nonconforming family and friends. We will continue working alongside each of you to end discrimination, transphobia and false gender constructs within our society. We value you and we are glad you are here. You are not alone. You are loved. You are worthy. And you Matter.
I have been waiting for months for us to get to this week’s saying.
Last fall, I was invited to a conference on nonviolence and the atonement. I chose to speak on violent forms of nonviolence: how atonement theories that treat the violent death of Jesus as salvific don’t bear nonviolent fruit toward the survivors of violence. We considered how penal substitution has produced violence, and we also weighed the violence that has come from more “nonviolent” theories such as moral influence and Christus Victor. I wish the recordings of those talks had been published. I will be giving a very similar presentation again this October and I will make sure that RHM publishes the recording.
This week’s saying is related to all of this. “Taking up one’s cross” has been used over and over to prioritize oppressors over survivors and to encourage the oppressed to passively and patiently endure. These ways of interpreting our saying this week have proven very convenient for oppressors and those who don’t want to disrupt the power imbalance of the status quo.
When one spouse suffers physical or emotional abuse at the hands of another, for example, how many times have Christian pastors counseled the abused spouse to “bear their cross,” be “like Jesus,” and simply “turn the other cheek”? We have covered previously in this series how turning the other cheek was for Jesus a call to creative, nonviolent forms of disruption, protest and resistance. It gave those pushed to the undersides and edges of society a way to reclaim and affirm themselves despite being dehumanized. This week, I want to suggest, as feminist and womanist scholars also do, that “taking up one’s cross” is not a call to patiently, passively endure, but to take hold of life and stand up against injustice even if there is a cost for doing so. This saying is not a call to passively suffer, but to protest even if the status quo threatens suffering.
There is a subtle difference, but the implications are huge. What we are discussing this week is called the myth of redemptive suffering. We have repeated Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker statement in their essay God So Loved The World? that by now most of you should have it memorized. I have repeatedly used it this year to lead up to what our saying that are considering this week.
“It is not acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not, Am I willing to suffer? but Do I desire fully to live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering. If you believe that acceptance of suffering gives life, then your resources for confronting perpetrators of violence and abuse will be numbed.” (Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, pp. 1-30)
What was Jesus talking about, then, when he said “take up your own cross?”
First, Borg and Crossan’s correctly remind us that Jesus’ cross in the gospels was about participation, not substitution:
“For Mark, it is about participation with Jesus and not substitution by Jesus. Mark has those followers recognize enough of that challenge that they change the subject and avoid the issue every time. (Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (Kindle Locations 1589-1593)
While I agree with Borg and Crossan’s about participation rather than substitution, I disagree with their interpretation that a cross (suffering) was an intrinsic part of following him. I do not subscribe to the idea that suffering is an intrinsic precursor of triumph or success. Suffering only enters into the picture of following Jesus if those benefitting from the status quo feel threatened by the changes that Jesus’ new social vision would make and threaten Jesus’ followers with a cross. In other words, being willing to take up one’s cross is not the call to be passive in the face of suffering, but to protest and resist in the face of being threatened with a cross.
Jesus could have very well said, “Anyone who is not willing to protest and resist, even in the face of a threatened cross, is not worthy of me.” “The cross” in this context does not mean remaining passive. It means being willing to endure the results of disrupting, confronting, resisting, and protesting injustice. The cross is not a symbol of passivity but of the consequences of resistance: it is a symbol of the suffering that those in power threaten protestors with to scare them into remaining passive. Remember, the question is not how much am I willing to suffer, but how badly do I want to live!
If those in power threaten you with a cross, then it become necessary for you to take up a cross to stand up against injustice. Otherwise, the cross never comes into the pictures. Protesting, for instance, does not always involve being arrested, but if it does, protest anyway! Just two weeks ago, Rev. Dr. William Barber II was arrested during a healthcare bill protest. Actor James Cromwell is in jail now for participating with others in an environmental protest in upstate New York.
The goal in scenarios like these is not to suffer, but to refuse to let go of life. Again, the question is not are you willing to suffer, but do you desire to fully live?
How one interprets this week’s saying has deep implications for survivors of relational violence, and for all who are engaging any form of social justice work. When those who feel threatened try to intimidate and silence your voice through fear of an imposed “cross,” this week’s saying calls us to count the cost and then refuse to let go of life. Do not be silenced. Reject death.
For clarity, let’s return to relational violence to illustrate. First there is the relational violence itself. Then we have a choice in our response:
Too often, Jesus’ teaching of taking up the cross has been interpreted so that the abuse itself is the cross.
Instead, consider that the abuse is not the cross but an initial injustice. In this model, the cross is the threats one receives for standing up to or resisting injustice.
My interpretation of this week’s saying is that Jesus is not encouraging his followers to remain passive, but to resist. And if a cross comes into the picture, then resist anyway. Jesus’ nonviolence was rooted in resistance, and sometimes change happens before there is a cross. So bearing a cross is not intrinsic to following Jesus. It only enters the picture when those who are threatened choose to add it.
Jesus was proposing a new social vision, a way of doing life as a community, that threatened those most benefited by systems of domination and exploitation. The way of Jesus was rooted in resource-sharing, wealth redistribution, and bringing those on the edges of society into a shared table where their voices could be heard and valued too. Did the early Jesus movement threaten those in positions of power and privilege? You bet. Jesus, this week, seems to be saying, when those in power choose to threaten crosses for those standing up to systemic injustice, don’t let go. Keep holding on to hope even in the face of impossible odds. Keep holding on to life—life to the full.
“The one who does not take one’s cross and follow after me cannot be my disciple.” Q 14:27
HeartGroup Application
This week, take time to thoughtfully read and consider Brown and Parker’s entire essay For God So Loved the World?
- Read the essay.
- Take notes. Journal thoughts, questions, challenges, new insights.
- Pick three things from your notes to share and discuss with your HeartGroup this upcoming week.
- Share!
I agree with Brown and Parker. Their interpretation may be subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world in how we respond to suffering and oppression.
Next weekend is our first 500:25:1weekend event in Asheville, NC. And we’re scheduling many more after this one. I’m so excited to be moving in this new direction with our community. If you haven’t signed up to be part of making these events happen you can do so at http://bit.ly/RHM500251. There you can also find out why we are making these changes, how support these new weekend events, and most importantly, how you can have us come to your community too.
I’m so glad you checked in with us this week.
Keep living love right there where you are. And know you are not alone. As we are engaging the teachings of Jesus, seek out ways you, too, can participate in the work of survival, resistance, liberation, restoration, and transformation. Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
The Light on the Lampstand
by Herb Montgomery
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a hidden place‚ but on the lampstand, and it gives light for everyone in the house.” Q 11:33
Companion Texts:
Matthew 5:14-16: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Luke 11:33: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light.”
Gospel of Thomas 33:2-3: “For no one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, nor does he put it in a hidden place. Rather, he puts it on a lampstand, so that everyone who comes in and goes out will see its light.”
This week’s saying appears in all three of the gospels we have been using as our companion texts this year. Matthew and Thomas both focus on the followers of Jesus’ teachings being light. Luke, as we will see next week, warns about what we call light really being the spreading of darkness. We’ll discuss the relevance of Luke’s saying to today’s western Christianity in more detail in our next eSight.
Matthew’s Focus
What I want us to notice first this week is an emphasis that some would be uncomfortable with. The focus of the saying is not on Jesus being the light of the world, but rather on Jesus’ followers being a source of light for the world (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14). In Luke, Jesus is warning about those who claim to be light becoming a source of darkness in the world. How often have status quo complicit Christians been found on the wrong side of history!
The statement is just as troubling for those who object, “Jesus is the light of the world, not us.” This objection comes from a desire to uplift Jesus to hero status, a position some people feel is threatened if we focus on being the light rather than pointing to Jesus as light.
Another possible root of discomfort with this saying is the belief that we are incapable of doing anything good and that Jesus has to do it all. This is a destructive belief taught in some sectors of Christianity that, too often, is used to lull Christians back to a position of passivity after they have been convicted or moved to action. I witnessed this recently when speaking on the Sermon on the Mount. After my presentation, the pastor got up and told the congregation that everything I had just spoken of (what Jesus taught in the Sermon the Mount) was impossible for any of us to do and Jesus must do it for us.
But we have the power to think and to do.
We have the power to make choices.
I have wondered why many atheists accomplish more in societal justice than some fundamentalist Christians do. Womanist writers such as Alice Walker have rightly captured the same universal truth that the Jesus of Sayings Gospel Q also taught: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting on.”
Jesus in Sayings Gospel Q is not preaching “Sit back and let me do everything.”
Jesus focuses on creating a community rooted in ethics and values that center the experiences of the vulnerable and marginalized in his own society and that call his community to make better choices. He believes that those following him can actually do better. They can be different. He shows them the way, casting before their mind’s eye what a path that is genuinely, holistically better can look like. In her volume Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God- Talk, writes:
“It seems more intelligent and more scriptural to understand that redemption had to do with God, through Jesus, giving humankind new vision to see the resources for positive, abundant relational life. Redemption had to do with God, through the ministerial vision, giving humankind the ethical thought and practice upon which to build positive, productive quality of life. Hence, the kingdom of God theme in the ministerial vision of Jesus does not point to death; it is not something one has to die to reach. Rather, the kingdom of God is a metaphor of hope God gives those attempting to right the relations between self and self, between self and others, between self and God as prescribed in the sermon on the mount, in the golden rule and in the commandment to show love above all else.” (pp. 130-131, emphasis added)
This way Jesus showed his followers is a way of survival, resistance, liberation, transformation, and restoration. In short, it is salvation. Not a post-mortem non-smoking section salvation, but a present, concrete, life-right-now salvation rooted in the context of community, together.
Luke’s Emphasis
Luke doesn’t focus exclusively on Jesus’ followers being the light of the world. Luke jumps straight to the absurdity of hiding a recently lit lamp when the obvious intent of lighting the lamp in the first place is to share the light with everybody.
At this stage of Luke’s version of the Jesus story, pressure is beginning to mount. The number of those positively resonating with Jesus’ teachings continues to grow, and the elite class in society begins to feel the threat of the momentum among the economically exploited. This saying may also reflect a temptation growing in Jesus himself to hide his own light. When those in places of privilege begin to feel threatened, they can be quite effective at threatening those they deem responsible.
Jesus was choosing life, and encouraging and showing others how to thrive, survive, and transform the world into a just and compassionate home for all. And his vision of life involved changes for those benefiting by the way life was structured in Jerusalem. Jesus was choosing life, and he was about to be threatened with death if he did not lie down, roll over, and go back into the shadows.
In the volume Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn, Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker wrote:
“It is not the acceptance of suffering that gives life; it is commitment to life that gives life. The question, moreover, is not Am I willing to suffer? but Do I desire fully to live? This distinction is subtle and, to some, specious, but in the end it makes a great difference in how people interpret and respond to suffering.” (p. 18)
Jesus was not choosing a path of death. Jesus was choosing life. And when beginning to feel threatened and pressured to hide his light, Jesus made the courageous choice to hold on, to not let go. The cross was not Jesus’ path to life. The cross was what the status quo responded to Jesus with. It was the cross and the fear of death that the elites used to intimidate Jesus into letting go of his hold on life. And Jesus kept holding on. He could see where what he was teaching and the sector of society he was choosing to side with would lead, and he had the courage to keep doing it. He choose not to hide his light, but share light, just like he spoke of power and resources, with everyone.
Your Light
Luke and Matthew both ask: What does taking hold of life look like to you? Does your taking hold of life cause others around you to feel their own place of privilege in society is threatened? Jesus shared his vision of a world where everyone thrives with equity, with justice, with compassion. The Jewish concept of shalom describes a wholeness that involves everyone. Genuine shalom is not present till we all together have shalom, and not just us, but also every living thing. But in a world where one believes only a limited number of people can thrive, someone else taking hold of life threatens one’s own thriving because resources are limited. Someone in this position does not believe the earth provides enough for every person’s need, as Gandhi taught. They believe that there is not enough to go around, and that if we each let go of our hoarded power and possessions, we will go without. Jesus instead imagined a world where we all have enough together.
Does a fear of loss keep you from shining your light? Is there something that intimidates you into hiding your light under a basket rather than sharing unquantifiable light with everyone?
While recently reading Stephen Greenebaum’s The Interfaith Alternative: Embracing Spiritual Diversity, I was moved by these words and I share them with you this week:
“The truth is that none of us can control what kind of splash we will make in the world, let alone how big or small that splash will be. Perhaps our coming and our passing will cause no splash at all, just the smallest of ripples. To be a human being is to have an opportunity. But as we well know, it is not an ‘equal opportunity.’ Some people are born with great wealth and some in devastating poverty. Some are born with robust health and some must fight just to live from the moment they enter the world. And sometimes we stumble, no matter how hard we try. But life, all life, is an opportunity nonetheless. And it is what we do, or do not do, with that opportunity that defines us. For me, the clouds parted and I could make at least some sense of meaning when I could visualize a great scale with compassion and justice forming one side and self-centeredness and injustice the other. None of us knows how much we’ll be able to add to the scales, for that, to a large extent, is a matter of chance. But we do control, we alone, each of us, every day, to which side of the scale we will make that day’s contribution. It may be a mote of dust, a twig, a pebble or a huge boulder — again, the size of our contribution may be beyond our control — but whatever the size of our contribution, every day we add something to those scales: compassion and justice, or self-centeredness and injustice. I deeply believe that in the end it is not how much we add to the scales, but to which side of the scale we have added it.” (pp. 100-101)
This week, in the name of advancing compassion and justice in our world, may this week’s saying encourage you, even if others threaten you and attempt to silence your voice, to let your light shine.
“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a hidden place‚ but on the lampstand, and it gives light for everyone in the house.” Q 11:33
HeartGroup Application
Last week I asked you to brainstorm and to make a list as a group some of the goals you would like to accomplish in the coming year. In our work of compassion and justice, consider Greenebaum’s words above. Whatever the size of your group’s contribution, ensure that you’re contributing on the right side of the scales.
- Pick three goals from your list last week.
- Begin getting informed regarding each one. This could involve coming alongside those already at work in those areas of justice/compassion work.
- Once you feel comfortable with your level of understanding about each goal, to the degree that you feel you can, define what meeting each goal would look like in tangible, concrete ways.
This last step may lead you to go back and pick another goal as well. That’s okay. However your list takes shape, make sure these are goals you are well informed about and that these are goals that can be defined by your group as a whole once that goal is met.
As this year is drawing to a close and another year is before us, I’m overwhelmed by how many of you are journeying with us. Thank you for showing up. I’m grateful to be on this journey with you, and know that together we can make a difference.
Till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each one of you dearly.
Keep living in love.
I’ll see you next week.
The Lord’s Prayer
by Herb Montgomery
“When you pray, say‚ Father — may your name be kept holy! — let your reign come: Our day’s bread give us today; and cancel our debts for us, as we too have cancelled for those in debt to us; and do not put us to the test!” (Q 11:2-4)
Companion Texts:
Matthew 6:9-12: “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Luke 11:2-4: “He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. ’ ”
This week, we’re looking at a saying in Q that many now call “The Lord’s Prayer.” Last week, we looked at the problematic nature of gendering God and Jesus’ naming God as our Father. This week, we’ll consider the tangible, concrete, economic nature of the rest of this prayer.
Jesus’ “reign of God,” as we have learned this year, can be defined simply as people helping people, taking responsibility for one another, living in centered relationships and community with a focus on quality of life for those whose lives and value as human beings has been denied, survival, resistance, liberation, restoration, and transformation.
Daily Bread
This prayer purposefully focuses on today: not tomorrow, but today. Gandhi is believed to have said that every day the earth produces enough for every person’s need, but not for every person’s greed. Greed can be defined as the exploitation of others and the hoarding of more than one needs for today (from fear of what may come tomorrow) while ignoring the basic daily needs of those being exploited.
In this prayer, Jesus doesn’t ask for tomorrow’s needs to be assured. He asks for our needs be met today. As we let go of our fear of the future, relinquish the exploitation of others, and choose instead a community of mutual aid, resource sharing, and mutual responsibility and care, we enter a path of trust. We trust that someone will take care of us if something should befall us tomorrow; we trust enough to be the ones who take care of those trouble has befallen today.
This is a path of abandonment and embrace. We’re abandoning values such as individualism and independence, and embracing our reality as humans who are interdependent. So we choose to balance each individual’s needs and the community where all of those needs can be met.
We take care of each other today, and leave tomorrow to worry about itself. As long as we have each other, we can together face what may come tomorrow. We don’t put our trust or hope in accumulated wealth but rather in each other as we live out the faith that Jesus modeled and the love that God shows us (see Psalms 62:10 cf. 1 Timothy 6:17).
Cancel All Debts
Next, this saying refers to debt cancellation. Some Q scholars believe that the phrase “cancel all debts” was part of the earliest form of this prayer. It’s interesting how the versions of this saying progressed from Jesus’ and the Torah’s concerns about economic liberation to a more “spiritual” language for debt that left the economic plight of the poor unaddressed. That’s convenient!
Let me explain.
It’s believed that the earliest form of the Q source text said “cancel our debts for us as we have cancelled those in debt to us.” In the spirit of the Torah’s sabbatical year (jubilee), this represented a community that had literally cancelled the debts of those who owed them, and now prayed that, like dominoes, their creditors would cancel their debts as well. They were setting something in motion and praying for its end: all debts forgiven!
When Matthew’s gospel adds this saying to Mark’s narrative, it becomes “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” This still means essentially the same thing, but notice the word “forgive.” This change sets up the phrasing in Luke.
Luke’s gospel phrases this saying, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” This final step enlarges the prayer and makes it relational rather than economic. Any sin is now included and the Torah/sabbatical year connection is lost. Now the prayer becomes a matter of forgiving wrongs other have committed in hopes that one’s own wrongs will also be forgiven.
All three versions of the prayer are valid. It’s also important to know their origins as well. We often focus on Jesus’s relational teachings today, and with good reason. Jesus’s economic teachings are challenging, and it can seem preferable to avert one’s gaze. Yet they are there in his teachings nonetheless, along with the teachings of the Torah:
“At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.” (Deuteronomy 15:1)
Luke’s gospel also affirms the centrality of “all debts cancelled” in a unique way. Luke begins Jesus’ ministry with Jesus taking the scroll of Isaiah in a Sabbath synagogue service and reading:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1; cf. Luke 4:18)
This “year of the Lord’s favor” is the sabbatical year Deuteronomy 15:1 refers to, a year when the people were to cancel all debts.
That commandment brought hope to indentured farmers, who used to own the farms they now worked on, and the day laborers who worked with them earning day wages. And what fear, objection, and threat it must have brought to Herod’s economy in Galilee and the wealthy aristocracy centered in Jerusalem. The economic elite in Galilee and Jerusalem would no doubt have been anxious to rid their societies of this itinerant teacher stirring up the hopes of the poor. (See The Jesus Story.)
There is a contrast, too, between the way Herod and Jesus approached politics. Politics is the subject of power and resources (wealth). Herod sought to hoard and then wield power and resources as the means whereby his Jewish people would be liberated, with him at the helm as hero, and liberation flowing unilaterally from him to the people.
Jesus, on the other hand, taught that both power and resources should be shared. Rather than the unilateral hero deliverance that we have transformed Jesus’ salvation into, Jesus taught the shared power of community where debts are cancelled, resources are shared, wealth is redistributed, and mutual aid becomes the order of the day. Jesus wanted his followers to be the source of a liberation that not only benefitted the Jewish people but would spread to and change the Roman world as well.
It is a misunderstanding to say that a community informed by Jesus’ teachings today should be relegated to spiritual matters and matters of politics should be left to the state. Jesus had much to say that was political—about power and resources. The community of Jesus followers is just as political as the state; we simply choose to go about politics differently.
Not Being Put To the Test
Lastly this week I want to discuss the difference between choosing life with the risk of a cross as pushback from the death dealers, and thinking that a cross or suffering is in itself the goal. Choosing a cross doesn’t bring life. Choosing life brings life. And sometimes we have to choose life even when a cross is being threatened against us, but choose life and thus a cross we must.
There is a subtle difference between choosing life with the risk of a cross and choosing a cross for the cross’s sake. If we can avoid suffering without sacrificing justice or our hold on life, then that is the better choice. In Jesus’ time, the cross was state execution. When you’re dead, whatever your reasons, you’re dead. In following Jesus, we should choose life even if threatened with death from the death dealers, and we should also not go around looking to get killed. This is why, I believe, we are taught to pray:
“Do not put us to the test!”
Because Jesus followers seek to emulate Jesus, how we define “being like Jesus” is vital. Jesus chose the way of life even when being threatened with a cross; he did not choose a cross. In cases of domestic violence, many women are counseled to “be like Jesus,” though they have sacrificed their selves by remaining in environments that are destructive to their entire being. We must be careful not to glorify suffering in contexts like these, and careful as we reject redemptive violence not to teach redemptive suffering.
To be like Jesus means to choose life, even with all the risks, threats, and dangers that taking hold of life and not being willing to let go of it entails, all the while praying that we will not be brought to what the gospel writers call the time of testing.
We choose life regardless of risk, knowing there may be a cross as a result, and keeping our focus on the life found in Jesus, not the death found in Jesus. When Jesus calls a person to follow him, he does not call that person to die, he calls that person to live! It is the threats of the powers that be that overshadow our choice of life with the cross. It’s not an intrinsic connection, but an imposed one. We’ll cover this again and in much more detail when we get to Jesus’ sayings about taking up the cross.
Today, my intuition tells me we must allow ourselves to face the economic elements of the Lord’s prayer in its original form. In a dog-eat-dog world, what could be changed if we chose to strike a more radical balance between individualism and what is best for our community?
Debt cancellation is a large task. Some are doing this task well, but not all of us are creditors. I would assume that many more of us are on the “debtor” side of the coin, and so an easier entry point may be a simple choice to follow Jesus’ teachings on mutual aid and sharing.
Regardless of where we pick up Jesus’ economic teachings, we can make a choice to subvert our culture’s tendency to value property over people or even treat people as property, and instead place people before both profit and property. The power of this choice should not be underestimated. It is the very stuff that has the potential to change our world.
And so we too pray,
“Father — may your name be kept holy! — let your reign come: Our day’s bread give us today; and cancel our debts for us, as we too have cancelled for those in debt to us; and do not put us to the test!” (Q 11:2-4)
HeartGroup Application
Too often, the church has only embraced social change once outside forces have given it no other option. We have taught that the gospel story teaches values that can create change more intrinsically. But this has never been how it has taken place, not yet. Whether we are talking about slavery, equality for the sexes, economic change, or, today, justice for our LGBT siblings, the church has seemed to lag.
For discussion this week:
- Discuss examples of where, historically, change did not come for the church from internal causes, but from outside pressures.
- Discuss why you feel this is typical, and what your group may be able to do to change that order for you.
- Pick one of those things and implement it this coming week.
The Lord’s Prayer could produce radical socioeconomic change for those who have the courage not just to pray it, but also to step out and implement it in the world. Let’s not just pray it. Let’s put it into action.
Thanks again for checking in this week.
Wherever you are and whatever you may find yourself in the midst of, our hope is that your heart has been renewed and inspired to continue following the salvific teachings of Jesus in your life and community.
Keep living in love, daily choosing love above all else, till the only world that remains is a world where only love reigns.
I love each of you dearly.
I’ll see you next week.
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